


Blame to Share

by premonitioning



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: AU, Angst, Emotionally Repressed Light, F/F, oohhhhhhhh the emotion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 02:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2490512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/premonitioning/pseuds/premonitioning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire sees her first. And panics, just a little bit, because she’s laughing with a petite redhead and Claire thinks that she’s going to run into her ex-girlfriend with her new girlfriend whilst she’s sitting in a crowded coffee shop by herself. Not exactly how she’d have wanted it to go down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame to Share

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted from my tumblr

Claire sees her first. And panics, just a little bit, because she’s laughing with a petite redhead and Claire thinks that she’s going to run into her ex-girlfriend with her new girlfriend whilst she’s sitting in a crowded coffee shop by herself. Not exactly how she’d have wanted it to go down.

 

Claire would’ve preferred to never run into Fang again, if she was honest, but her imagination had always presented her with the scene of Claire being a high ranking officer with a super-hot partner (both professionally and romantically) at a fancy restaurant (even though Fang never went to such places). Claire would leave Fang in a puddle of her own drool whilst she went home to her swanky penthouse apartment and had wild, steamy sex with her new partner (all the better if it was a dude – that would make Fang furious). 

 

But no, life was not that kind to Claire. She’d only managed to become a lieutenant, because even though she liked Amodar, she was not going to brown nose the rest of the higher ups just to climb the ranks. If they didn’t want to promote her because of her lack of personal skills, not her spotless record, then fuck them all. She was still living alone in the same apartment she’d moved into after their breakup. She couldn’t afford to go to fancy restaurants, not with Serah still drowning under student debts. All she could afford were small coffee shops near her apartment that fill up on the weekend with people on dates.

 

_Fuck_.

 

In the time that Claire had taken to panic about the way that her life had turned out, she’d lost sight of Fang and her new girlfriend. She heaved a sigh of relief and slumped in her chair, only to receive a tap on her shoulder. Claire turned her head to see the redhead smiling at her and saying something. Clair pulled one of her earphones out.

 

“– it’s just that there’s nowhere else to sit…” she finished. Claire could only gape.

 

“Uhm…miss, are you okay? I really don’t want to intrude on your privacy, but I wouldn’t be asking if there were any other seats free…”

 

“Light?”

 

A barrage of swear words ran through Claire’s mind as Fang came up behind the redhead, carrying a tray laden with drinks and sweets, an expression of complete and utter shock on her face. The redhead looked between them.

 

“Light? As in Lightning? As in _the Lightning_? The one who br-”

 

“That’s enough, Vanille. We’ll find somewhere else.” Fang cut off the girl – Vanille – before Claire could find out what sordid details Fang had divulged about their relationship to her new girlfriend.

 

“Fang…there’s nowhere else to sit…and we’ve already bought our food…” Vanille glanced nervously at Claire.  

 

“I’m leaving.” If she was being made to choose between sitting at the same table as Fang and Vanille, then Claire would happily leave. She hadn’t finished her coffee, but that was a small price to pay. Vanille seemed to be the chatty type and seeing Fang had left Claire in the foulest of moods.

 

She slung her bag over her shoulder and, with a little less grace than she normally possessed, manoeuvred through the crowd of people and out the door. Claire didn’t look back. She’d made it halfway down the street before she felt a strong hand grab her elbow.

 

“Fang, I swear to the goddess that I will arrest you for sexual harassment if you don’t let go of me _right now_ ,” she snarled, whirling around. Fang held her hands up, a symbol of compliance.

 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” she began, slowly lowering her hands to her hips.

 

“ _What_?”

 

“Vanille, she’s not my girlfriend, she’s my sister.”

 

Clair scoffed and folded her arms. Bullshit. “Fang, you’re an only child.” And a goddamned orphan at that. It had been one of the things they had bonded over – being their own guardians from a young age.

 

Fang’s narrow eyebrows pulled together into a scowl. “I call her my sister because it’s a bit of a mouthful to say ‘this is the girl who I protected and cared for like a sister when we were living in an orphanage before she got adopted and I became of age’. She is to me what Serah is to you.”

 

People were starting to stare at them, at the two tall, powerful women snarling and hissing at each other in the middle of the street on a Sunday afternoon.

 

“So _what?_ We’re not together Fang. I haven’t seen nor heard from you in _three years_. I don’t care who you’re currently fucking – or not fucking. _Bye_.” She turned on her heel, and continued walking home. She couldn’t look at Fang’s face anymore because it had taken her so long to stop dreaming of her, to stop panicking because she was waking up in a room that was hers, not theirs, and that her new apartment had no traces of Fang. She had gotten over her. It had been hard, but Claire had managed to do the things for herself and her sister that parents were supposed to do when she was just 15.

 

Getting over Fang was not the toughest thing she’d ever done. But seeing her now was reversing some of the process.

 

“I’m _sorry,_ Claire!”

 

Claire stopped walking.

 

“I’m sorry, I know I never said it when it mattered, I know I should’ve said it during those last few days but I didn’t and I regret it. I’ve regretted it every day since. I regret every day that you’re not in my life.”

 

Closing her eyes, Claire thought of the last days of their relationship, the screaming, the throwing, the silence. The silence had been the worst. All she’d wanted was Fang to start a conversation with her, to do what she was too afraid and awkward to do but the words never came and so, Claire had left.

 

“I miss you.”

 

Fang was touching her elbow again, but gentler and more hesitant than before. Claire sighed and turned around, clutching at the strap of her bag.

 

“Your sister is waiting for you.” 

 

She fled, leaving Fang standing on the sidewalk with an expression that would take weeks for Claire to forget.

 

-

 

Three months later and Claire groaned at the knock on her door. She’d just finished sorting through her mail and was fully prepared to take a hot, long bath after a hard day’s work, but apparently that was not happening.

 

There was another knock, more insistent this time.

 

“Coming!”

 

She muttered profanities under her breath, which drifted into silence as she opened the door to see Fang standing in her hallway.

 

Claire knew that she’d hesitated in closing the door, because she’d given Fang enough time to slide her foot against the frame and prevented her from shutting it in her face.

 

“Light, I need to talk to you.”

 

“No, you need to go home,” Claire grunted, pushing the door against Fang’s foot but she was wearing those dumb combat boots. When was she not wearing those dumb combat boots? “How did you even find out where I live? Have you been stalking me? That’s illegal.”

 

Fang made a noise that sounded like an exasperated laugh. “Turns out, Vanille knows Hope.”

 

Claire was going to murder him. What had he been thinking? Hope had been the one who’d basically gotten her through the breakup, he’d helped her find the apartment, helped her move her stuff, made sure she was actually eating – did he actually think that giving Fang her details would be beneficial in any way?

 

“And Vanille can weasel information out of anyone, whether they’re aware of it or not. She’s quite terrifying when she wants to be.”

 

Okay, maybe murdering would be too much. He’d just get a punch for letting his guard down.

 

“She sounds like Serah.”

 

Fang did laugh that time, and Claire cursed silently. She couldn’t let this happen, she couldn’t let Fang edge her way back into her life. But that laughter… Gods, how she’d missed it. She missed Fang’s voice. Leaning her forehead against the door and clutching at the handle, Claire took a deep breath.

 

“I think if Vanille teamed up with Serah, it would be complete armageddon for all involved.”

 

“She hates you, Fang.”

 

There was silence on the other side of the door for a few moments. Claire didn’t know why she’d said it. She wanted to drive Fang away before she pushed open the door. She knew that Fang was physically strong enough to, but she was holding back. She was pushing open the metaphorical door inside Claire’s head, though, and Claire was struggling to keep that one closed.

 

“I’m sure she does.” There was a quiet, strangled quality to Fang’s words. “I don’t blame her. I fucked up pretty badly, didn’t I?”

 

“It’s not like I’m entirely innocent…I did throw that lamp at your head.”

 

“Ah, well, if you hadn’t given me a concussion I would remember the reason why. Did I push you into doing it?”

 

“Yeah.” Claire didn’t take being called a ‘frigid bitch’ lightly.

 

“There we go.”

 

They stood in silence for a few more moments until Claire, despite every instinct telling her not to, slowly pulled back the door to face Fang.

 

“I…” She took a deep breath. It was a little bit ridiculous what seeing Fang’s face did to her. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

 

Fang seemed to shrink once she was inside Claire’s apartment. She was supposed to be tall and imposing and took up so much space in every room she entered but right now all Claire could concentrate on was the hunch in her shoulders.

 

“Do…you think it’d be possible for us to be in each other’s lives again? I mean, just as friends, not like we were…I know we can’t go back to that, but I just…” Claire’s chest was clenching as Fang spoke. “I thought I could live with it. But seeing you in that coffee shop…I realised, no, it wasn’t okay, you aren’t someone I can live without.”

 

Claire cracked.

 

She moved on impulse alone, throwing herself against Fang’s body, arms wrapping around her waist and fingers digging into her shirt.

 

“I don’t do words, Fang, I don’t know how,” Claire mumbled into her shoulder. Fang still smelled the same. She still used the same shampoo, same fabric conditioner – that faint hint of sweat made Claire pull Fang tighter against her.

 

Fang was barely touching her, hands practically hovering over her shoulders.

 

“I know, sunshine, I know…”

 

They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity, when Fang spoke again.

 

“Do you hate me?”

 

Claire shook her head. Fang’s arms wrapped around her shoulders.

 

“But you’re angry.”

 

Claire nodded.

 

“Of course.” Fang rested her cheek on the top of Claire’s head. “Have…have you missed me?”

 

Claire nodded and pressed her fingers into Fang’s side for good measure, to the point of pain.

 

“Okay, okay, I got it, I missed you too. Then…” Fang took a deep breath, her chest rising against Claire’s. “Do…you want to see me again?”

 

Fang was trying desperately hard to hide the hopefulness in her voice. Claire took a moment to answer. She thought she hadn’t wanted to see Fang ever again, but now that her breath was tickling her ear, their bodies pressed against each other, Fang’s voice low and quiet and _desperate_ , Claire didn’t know how she’d managed so long without it.

 

“Yes.”

 

Claire was nearly winded with how tightly Fang was holding her now.

 

“As friends?”

 

“No, Fang. Not as friends. I can’t be your friend, not when I know what you feel like, how you taste, I remember every inch of you, you _fucking idiot how could you do this to me_? _Why didn’t you come after me when I left?_ ” Claire wanted to kick and punch and scream but she was holding Fang too tightly, Fang was holding her too tightly, they were clinging onto each other like life rafts in a dangerous sea.

 

“I’m sorry, Claire, I thought that you never wanted to see me ever again, I thought going after you would make things worse than they already were, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Claire had heard enough. She pulled back just far enough to be able to crush her mouth against Fang’s.


End file.
